I will be using the latest version of vSphere PowerCLI as of the time of writing which is version 6.3 Release 1 running on a Windows box. Supported OS for this release include Windows 2012 R2, Windows 2008 R2 SP1, Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1. Also make sure Powershell and .Net 4.5 are installed.The install itself is straightforward.

Run the installer and pick which modules you want to install

I then need then set the execution policy of Powershell to RemoteSigned to be able to run scripts and load configuration files. I need to open PowerCLI and run

>Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

For the exam its unclear how much configuration is required for PowerCLI. As PowerCLI is started up the default modules are loaded from the Initialize-PowerCLIEnvionment.ps1 script located in the install directory script folder.

To add a custom script to run after this script, copy the script into this folder and call it Initialize-PowerCLIEnvionment_Custom.ps1. On startup the Initialize-PowerCLIEnvionment.ps1 will automatically run another script with this name should one exist.

Use basic and advanced PowerCLI Cmdlets to manage a vSphere deployment

I will go over some example Cmdlets but it would be impossible to show them all, people have wrote books on the subject and it difficult to know what you will be asked to do in the exam. Auto Deploy configuration via PowerCLI falls into the remit so I would expect that to be included. Pluralsight have an advanced management course on the subject that can be found here. The VMware documentation can be found here. Regardless of the questions that might get asked, if you can use PowerCLI you can save a lot of time in the exam instead of waiting for the Web Client to respond / refresh.

PowerCLI is critical for using Auto Deploy, its here you have to create image profiles and create deploy rules to build your hosts. I have covered this in a previous exam objective, see here. At that point I didnt cover the Image Builder which I will illustrate it here. Image Builder can be used to update an existing image profile to include new or updated vibs, this can be from VMware from a new release of ESXi or from a 3rd party vendor that has updated one of their vibs.

First I connect to vCenter using PowerCLI and see what image profiles I have previously configured, I have one configured called LabProfiles6.0 which is using the ESXi 6.0 GA release image.

>Get-EsxImageProfile

For this example I have downloaded a newer version of ESXi and add it as a software depot.

>Add-EsxSoftwareDepot C:\OSFiles\ESXi-6.0.0.20160301001s.zip

I then want to clone out my existing image profile to a new one that I want to use for the updated profile.

I can then export this profile to a .zip file if I want to or use it for a deployment rule.

You can also connect directly to the vendor software depot and export the updated package that way, VMware’s is available at https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml.